However, in my opinion, something as important as the first cleared altitude/level should be clearly and unambiguously shown. In the AAIB report, the box from the plate shown has the first cleared altitude tucked away in the explanation of the routing - in the same font, and font size as the rest of the narrative.
Agreed, certainly in the early days of our use of electronic charts (not that long ago) there were SIDs where a hard height was hidden away exactly as you describe. Fortunately that has now been changed
Despite that I'd like to think that, as philbky has said, the thought of a straight climb to cruise level right off the ground in the States might have rung a few alarm bells with somebody, but then again I wasn't there.